Quba HQ

Preset+Tutorial: Floaties

In this tutorial I will demonstrate the use of a new free preset from QubaHQ.com – Floaties. Floaties is a text animator based fake particle simulator allowing you to create floating specs of dust, glitters, bokeh-style out of focus abstract backgrounds and other visual elements. It attempts to emulate some of the basic behavior found in Trapcode Particular, providing limited, but free alternative to that popular plugin (as long as you are going for a certain visual style).

Running time: 51min
Difficulty: Easy
Required tools: After Effects

Music used in the preview video is a fragment of Borrel by Jukka Koops a.k.a. Sumo Lounge. Check his other works at: jukkakoops.com

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New tutorials coming, no more project files

Hello everyone! Just another update on the state of things regarding new QubaHQ tutorials. As you can guess I have good news and bad news for you (and double good news for myself). Let’s start with the good ones.

New tutorials are on the way. This weekend I am planning to release a new text animator based preset, once again using After Effects’ built-in tools in an unexpected way. Originally I planned to release this preset as a part of larger, paid content, but after careful deliberation decided to throw you all another cool freebie. Follow my twitter for the updates on recording and release. Hopefully this time Camtasia will behave better than on the last recording session.

Now for the bad good other news: I have decided to stop including project files with my tutorials. There are multiple reasons for this decision, so let me just list a few.

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QubaHQ Tube

If you are a frequent QubaHQ visitor, you are probably already familiar with the Vimeo channel containing all the tutorials from this site. I have been using Vimeo as my primary video host for two reasons: first being their great video encoding quality, and the second – the fact that I was not allowed to upload content longer than 15 minutes to YouTube.

Today I realized that my account has actually been approved for longer uploads for quite some time, and I am currently in the process of uploading all of the tutorials to my channel. Vimeo will still remain my primary host, but with the content available on both of these major video sites, you now have an option of where and how you want to watch my tutorials… and I have a chance of reaching a wider audience.

You can access the QubaHQ tutorials playlist at: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL38A6A9E1711979BB or subscribe to my YouTube channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/q3c

As for the new tutorials – I have some stuff planned, but still no time to actually record anything. Follow, subscribe, check often and you will know when the new content arrives.

Tutorial: Procedural Disintegration

In this long-delayed tutorial I will show you an efficient method for disintegrating/dispersing a 3D layer into particles. The method shown here has been optimized to produce maximum amount of particles at lowest computing cost (more stuff flying around, faster renders).

Originally planned to be released in June 2010, this tutorial concludes the four-part series including: 100% Accurate Reflections, Automated Light Rig and Light Wall.

Running time: 70min
Difficulty: Medium
Required tools: After Effects, Trapcode Particular
Optional plug-ins: VC Optical Flares (or similar)

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Good news, everyone!

I have been using Dreamhost for many years now and could not be happier with the quality of service they provide. I have used many hosts in the past (doesn’t it sound like a creepy sci-fi quote?) and always suffered from messed up controls, poor plans, incompetent support – all that until I switched to Dreamhost. No matter how hard I mess up, what files I accidentally delete and whichever databases I corrupt – they always manage to get my sites back up and running quickly and professionally.

I do however realize that media streaming from QubaHQ can be a bit slow at times. Apparently it varies from day to day and from user to user, but I have received enough complaints to actually take action and do something about it.

It is my pleasure to announce that from now on all the new tutorial content from QubaHQ will be hosted in at Vimeo. All the future tutorials will be published in HD (720p at 30fps) resulting in both much better viewing experience and increased file sizes. Vimeo seems like the best match to host such content. Additionally, the videos will now be viewable both on computers and on all the major mobile platforms, including iPhone and iPad. You will also be able to download and save the entire tutorials both from Vimeo and from QubaHQ.

While I want you to keep coming back to the site, you may now also subscribe to the new Vimeo channel with my tutorials at: http://vimeo.com/channels/qubahq

Tutorial+Preset: Light Wall

Hello everyone! Yes, it is here – a long-delayed new tutorial from the June series. It’s been around 6 weeks since the previous tutorial, but I have been incredibly busy building a new kick-ass hi-tech intro for the tutorials… No. Not really. The truth is I have been working on multiple commercial projects and could not find any time off for neither leisure nor tutorials. As for the intro – I knocked it together in a few minutes at 4:00AM last night.

This tutorial is a hybrid between the Automated Light Rig and Scrolling LED Text. We will be building an animated image map driven light array that can be used for for either cool light effects or easily controlled particle emission.

While the entire project can be completed within After Effects, I will also jump into Cinema 4D every now and then and show you a very easy way for creating quite complex light arrays and importing them back into AE.

Music used in the trailer comes from Beck’s Cellphone’s Dead from the album The Information. Music in the intro comes from… here.

Running time: 73min
Difficulty: Easy-Advanced (depending how much you want to learn :)
Required tools: After Effects
Optional software and plug-ins: Cinema 4D, Trapcode Particular, VC Optical Flares (or similar)

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The State of Things

I guess it is not too hard to notice that June is gone and I have managed to cover only half of the tutorial content from the trailer. Unfortunately, you will have to be patient for a little while longer.

It’s been raining projects here, and I literally don’t have any free time left to work on the site. This is likely to continue for a few more weeks, so naturally the Automated Light Array and Procedural Disintegration tutorials have been delayed until sometime later this Summer.

Be sure that the moment I catch a moment to breathe I will record the next video, but for now you just have to check the site regularly to see if that moment has come. Until then – enjoy the Summer, or go around the site and try out all these new shiny Facebook Like buttons. If you feel particularly generous, there is also a nice rounded yellow button on the right side you may want to try.

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Tutorial+Preset: Automated Light Rig

Most of the time it is the best practice to manually control the lights in your After Effects scenes. There are situations however, when you may want to automate the dynamic changes in light color and intensity while maintaining high level of control over the look of your composition. That’s what the Automated Light Rig is all about.

In this tutorial I will show you how to link your lights with automated samplers on an image map, creating an ever-changing, yet unified, light rig. While the tutorial explains the expressions in depth, I am also providing you with presets simplifying the entire process into just few clicks.

As a little extra, I will also show you how to create a 3D light-aware smoke using Trapcode Particular (my method is a bit more involved than the standard Particular setup, but produces results that are much more true to life).

Music used in the trailer comes from Mr. Oizo’s Fiat 55 from the album Analog Worms Attack.

Running time: 45min
Difficulty: Easy-Medium
Required tools: After Effects
Optional plug-ins: Trapcode Particular

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Convert time and dates using Wolfram Alpha

Often times I find myself in a need of converting time and date from the US time zones to my local ones. Today I was trying to figure out the net broadcast times for the E3 conferences. The schedule for the first one read Mon 6/14 10:30am PST and I was way too lazy to calculate the time offset for all six events manually.

There are a whole bunch of sites that deal with time conversion, but they are either painfully ugly to look at or week on functionality. Google, as of yet, does not do any time conversions. I decided to try Wolfram|Alpha – the awesome “scientist in a box” from the authors of Mathematica. The result it returned was nothing short of perfect.

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Tutorial: 100% Accurate Reflections

In this After Effects tutorial I will demonstrate to you how to build a two-camera rig in order to create perfect 3D reflections. Using this technique, you will be able to reflect not only 3D layers, but also lights, particles, as well as any plug-in that obeys the movement of AE’s 3D camera.

The setup is trivially easy when using hand-animated cameras, but in the second half of the video I also show you how to create a more complex rig for use with Video Copilot’s Sure Target 2 camera controls.

The music used in the preview is a fragment of an Instrumental Mix of Perfect Exceeder by MASON vs Princess Superstar.

Running time: 51 min
Difficulty: Easy (you will be surprised how easy)
Required tools: After Effects (CS3 and above)
Optional plug-ins: VC Optical Flares, Knoll Light Factory, Trapcode Lux, Trapcode 3D Stroke, Trapcode Particular

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